LA Weekly

Update: Jonathan Gold's 2007 list of L.A.'s 99 is now online.

What does the Weekly mean by “99 Essential L.A. Restaurants”? It isn’t necessarily a list of the very best restaurants in Los Angeles; that would almost certainly include L’Orangerie, which has been the most rigorously French restaurant on the West Coast for decades, as well as Belvedere at the Peninsula Hotel, Noe at the Omni, and too many high-end sushi bars to count, Mori, Shibucho and Wa among them. Nor is it a roster of the most influential restaurants: Valentino, Chinois and Patina are conspicuously absent. It certainly isn’t an inventory of the most popular places to eat — we do include Casa Bianca and Pink’s, but Langer’s Delicatessen is included instead of Junior’s and Brent’s, and you will find the quirky Mexican cooking of Babita instead of the throng-pleasing cuisine of El Coyote, Marix or Mexico City.


An essential restaurant is a restaurant that reflects Los Angeles in a startling and unusual way, that uses fresh local ingredients in a fashion that respects the land in which they were grown, that showcases cooking echoing both foreign-trained chefs’ region of origin and the hypercharged mosaic of the Los Angeles dining scene. An essential restaurant moves people, inspires them to think about food in a new way, inspires them to think about Southern California as a great agricultural region, a great port, a builder of the shiny symbolism that is a large factor in how the rest of the world thinks of itself. And it’s also a damned good place to eat.


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Alcazar

A fragrant slice of coastal Lebanon, Alcazar is a shaded terrace of music, grilled mullet and waiters who transfer bright coals of apple-flavored tobacco to brass hookahs. Enormous kebab plates are rushed to tables — and the shish towook, grilled kebabs of extravagantly marinated chicken breast, is as good as a kebab ever gets. On weekends, ultrathin sajj bread is baked on the patio in a vast heated pan, wrapped around grilled meat or made into the thin, crisp, thyme-scented Arab quesadillas called kl’leg. Lebanon is famous for its red wine, but Alcazar, in the gentle levant of Encino, also serves oceans of arak, an anise-scented Lebanese liquor that turns milky when you stir it with ice and cool water. 17239 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 789-0991. Tues.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 5:30–10:30 p.m., Sat. 11:30 a.m.–mid., Sun. noon–9 p.m. Full bar. Hookah and cigar lounge. Takeout. Lot parking in rear. AE, MC, V. Lebanese. $


Alegria

Alegria is the kind of Mexican bohemian hangout you may have suspected must exist somewhere in Los Angeles, an art-infused Silver Lake café where the talk always seems to be of music, gallery shows and the depredations of City Hall. The usual taco plates and vegetarian burritos are well-represented, but the best food here revolves around the extraordinary mole sauce: sharp, thick, sweetly complex, with top notes of smoke, clove and citrus, lashed with dried-chile heat, black enough to darken the brightest Pepsodent smile. (It takes two days to make, a million steps, and has something like 20 ingredients.) If you insist, you can get a side of mole sauce to put on your burrito. 3510 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake, (323) 913-1422, www.alegriaonsunset.com. Mon.–Thurs. 10 a.m.–10 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 10 a.m.–11 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. Mexican. $


Al-Watan

A bare, smoky dining room adjacent to a Muslim butcher shop, Al-Watan is the summit of basic Pakistani cooking in Los Angeles, spicy, meaty, and deeply inflected by the flavors of ginger, cardamom and chiles, with some of the most vividly smoky tandoor-cooked meats you will ever taste. First among the stews is haleem, beef braised with shredded wheat until it breaks down into a thick gravy with the flavor of well-browned roast-beef drippings, but as meaty as Al-Watan may be, even vegetarians can be happy here: Navratan korma, a mixture of cauliflower, green beans and carrots stir-fried with chile and plenty of spices, is like a wonderful Muslim ratatouille, the flavors of each vegetable fresh and distinct while contributing to the cumulative effect of the cumin-scented whole. 13611 Inglewood Ave., Hawthorne, (310) 644-6395. Open daily 11 a.m.–10 p.m. No alcohol. MC, V. Indian. $$


Angeli Caffe

Before Angeli, Angelenos had no idea how much they loved casual Italian cooking — not four-cheese lasagna or cognac-flamed veal fillets, but the spaghetti alla checca, roast chicken and minimally garnished pizza that a Sienese teenager might eat for dinner at the trattoria down the block on the nights his mother didn’t feel like turning on the stove. Angeli’s popularity may have inspired hundreds of restaurants featuring salads dressed with balsamic vinegar, but Angeli’s rustic simplicity is still the benchmark. The pastas of chef Evan Kleiman, KCRW radio host and the local standard-bearer for the Slow Food movement, are beyond remarkable. And if you live within a few miles of the restaurant, they even deliver. The Thursday-night dinners, multicourse prix fixe extravaganzas based around a different cuisine each week, are legend. 7274 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 936-9086, www.angelicaffe.com. Lunch Tues.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Tues.–Thurs., Sun. 5–10 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 5–11 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Rustic regional Italian. $$


Angelini Osteria

A loud Italian trattoria with reasonable versions of Roman trattoria classics like saltimbocca, spaghetti and pollo alla diavola, Angelini Osteria is the place to go for a decent scottadito, a glass of Chianti or a crisp, sparely dressed pizza. The more formal La Terza seems closer to chef Gino Angelini’s sensibilities, but sometimes you crave the challenging textural complexities of smoked sea bass smeared with bottarga, and sometimes you just want a quick plate of spaghetti carbonara. If the nightly specials include Angelini’s braised oxtails, do not hesitate. 7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 297-0070. Lunch Tues.–Fri. noon–2:30 p.m.; dinner Tues.–Sun. 5:30–10:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Valet parking. AE, JCB, MC, V. Italian. $$